A story addict since an early exposure to Dr. Seuss, award-winning author of over 30 novels and novellas, Michelle Levigne has been creating her own stories, heroes and adventures since junior high. She ventures into many sub-genres of science fiction, paranormal, romance and fantasy, including Greek mythology, Narnia spin-offs and her futuristic universe, the Commonwealth.
Michelle writes something for everyone! After all, since she likes to read all over the board, why not WRITE all over the board?
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DAY AND KNIGHT by Michele L. Levigne
~A Fae daycare teacher, and an exterminator under a family curse need each other more than they can guess when magic goes wonky.~
All's Fae in Love and Chocolate #1Glori loved working with children--and not just because children produced magic that fed her own Fae magic. But when her magic started going wonky and all her maintenance spells for the daycare started working backwards, not even her Fae administrator could fix what was wrong.
Lance Knight faced a lonely future, thanks to a family curse that turned him into a mouse at the dark of the moon. Lonely, except for the ghosts of all his angry, misogynistic male ancestors. And he would join them someday, if he didn't find a woman to love him despite the curse.
He needed the kiss of a Faerie princess to break the spell. When he got called to Glori's daycare center to deal with an unbelievable bug problem, and realized she was a Fae, he thought his problems were solved.
Glori hated telling Lance that the Fae didn't have hereditary royalty anymore, but she promised she would try to find him a solution while they worked together to solve her problem. Things got sticky when she realized that she was going through the Fae equivalent of puberty, and Lance might just be the answer to her problem. If only his nasty, ghostly relatives wouldn't keep getting in the way.
BUY THE eBOOK *** READ THE EXCERPT *** WATCH THE TRAILER
WIN - Everyone who leaves Michele a question today at her Cyber Launch Party will get a party favor - faerie bear finger puppets, a sampler CD that includes the new book trailer!! And one lucky winner gets a T-shirt with the cover art of all four stories in her All's Fae In Love And Chocolate Series! Please leave your email address so Michele can contact you for your mailing address.
This story sound delicious. I am really looking forward to reading your series. Anything with CHOCOLATE in the title has to be yummilicious...lol
ReplyDeletekoonie2888 at yahoo dot com
Michelle is right - you can never go wrong with chocolate!!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the re-release of DAY AND KNIGHT and on the series coming out with Uncial Press.
Tell us all about this series and how the books connect (btw readers, be sure to watch the video - it explains a lot!)
I love the new covers you have for the books- so fun!
And thanks so much for offering EVERYONE a party favor today! That always makes for a fun party!
I wish you great success with the new release and hope DAY AND KNIGHT flies off the cyber shelves!
Enjoy our party and have a great weekend!
We are delighted to bring the Fae back. I've loved this series ever since I first read Day and Knight. They are all the kind of stories that you can return to again and again. Just plain fun.
ReplyDeleteJude (at Uncial Press)
Like I said in the invitation to the Cyber Launch Party, if you have ideas for a 5th and 6th story, share them! I might just come up with more -- you'd be willing to see more, wouldn't you, Jude?
ReplyDeleteJude is my long-suffering editor and publisher (wave, to everybody, Jude!).
And everybody say Happy Birthday, because she just had her one allotted birthday for the year.
Let's see, what don't you know about the All's Fae stories .....
Oh, yeah!
It started out as a story that another publisher -- which no longer exists -- had asked people to submit. I can't even remember the details, except it dealt with magic going wrong. (At least, I think that's what they wanted...)
I brainstormed the whole thing at work one day when it was a little slow, and kind of bounced the ideas off my co-workers -- also creative types. I worked at an advertising agency at the time. I got a lot of "Huh?????" looks from a couple of people, when I gave them fragments of my ideas, but from the start I had a day-care teacher who had misbehaving magic, and an exterminator who came to help with the mortal, mundane side of the problem.
Only in the first couple of drafts, Lance turned into a giant cockroach, instead of a mouse! You can thank the previous publisher for insisting I change him to a mouse.
The Fae kept growing on me, and I had a lot of fun figuring out ways their magic could malfunction, reasons why they would prefer to live in the Human world rather than the Fae world (easier access to chocolate, diet cherry cola, and cable), and what would bring two Fae together strongly enough for it to stick, and to make them willing to grow up and settle down.
Enter .... Need. The Fae equivalent of Pon Farr. Only the women get it instead of the men ... and the men are terrified of the whole idea, until they're caught!
I also decided that dark chocolate was a cure-all, energy booster, and diet cherry cola made them drunker than Romulan Ale.
Hence the reason for chocolate in the name of the series.
It's been a wild ride -- and the Fae have sort of migrated over to a weird little town I made up that several different story lines kind of .... merge into: Neighborlee, Ohio. If you like the Fae, you might want to check out "Divine's Emporium" and "Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas," which are also published by Uncial Press.
I'm planning on attempting Camp NaNoWriMo this July, and rough drafting the next Divine's story -- "Divine Knight," which will end Maurice's exile and reveal the spell and curse that Angela, the proprietress of Divine's Emporium has been living under for the last few centuries.....
super congrats ! cant wait to read it sounds really good.
ReplyDeletereginamayr@att.net
I have a lot of fun with my Fae, because I just let go and get silly. There are some basic rules -- because even with unreal things like magic and the Fae and other dimensions of reality, you have to have some boundaries and ground rules.
ReplyDeleteEach story has been an adventure, discovering something new, and trying to fit into the rules or bits of information created for the previous story. I'm having great fun brainstorming all the magic rules and maneuvering and scheming that Angela and Maurice have to go through, and deciding who exactly their enemy is -- is it the presence sleeping underneath the town already, mentioned in other stories, or is this enemy the one that originally tore Angela away from her one true love, her knight in dark armor? Or someone else, who decides to zap Angela so he can get to someone else in the weird little town of Neighborlee?
And what can I do with all the Fae who are moving into town?
I borrow somewhat from Terry Pratchett, just in the structuring of this magical world, even -- or especially when -- if it's unconscious borrowing. The Discworld books are a heavy, delightful influence in my life. Such inspired silliness. Even better than the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now THAT was insanity.
Anybody out there?
ReplyDeleteIt isn't time for the Indians to play the Giants for another half hour!
That's what I'll be doing at 4 -- but I'll still be checking in here.
If you have questions, if you have ideas for more stories -- speak up!
And don't forget to come back about this same time in July, August and September, for the launch parties for the rest of the stories --
Smoke and Mirrors -- Alexi's enormous magical talent is fading away. He nees to find a way to surpport himself, without magic, and without having to marry a Fae woman to nursemaid him for the rest of his life. What does a Fae with fading magic do? He goes to hide in Vegas!
Megan is a Halfling, working as a magician in Vegas, and hires Alexi as her assistant. She can tell something is wrong with his magic, but the last thing she wants to do is reveal her Fae roots and scare him away. As friendship grows into something more, the day of reckoning and the truth comes closer. Can they survive?
She Blinded Me with Science -- Kevyn is hiding in the Human realms, making his living as a day player in films, and trying to hide from the hunters who want to drag him home to his Fae family, who want to make him an advocate: a Fae lawyer. He gets a job working the fandom circuit, doing Star Trek skits at conventions.
There he meets Sophie, with pointed ears and weird relatives and their weirder reputations that she is trying to live down -- while working on her doctoral thesis that magic is psychosomatic. When she realizes that she can see Kevyn when he turns invisible, and he realizes it too ... she decides she needs to take him home as a science project and study him.
But it turns into a case of the mice experimenting on the scientists.
And the NEW story:
Death by Chocolate
The Fae administrator queen is dead. The weapon: poisoned chocolate. The suspects: everyone who gave her chocolate as a coronation gift. Which is about 3/4 of the Fae population.
Epsi is a suspect for many reasons: she has a claim to the throne, she went to school with the dead queen, she gave her chocolate, and worst, she is a cousin to the previous administrator king who was ejected from office for questionable practices.
Guber, a friend of Kevyn from "Science" has an even stronger claim to the throne. He's good with Human science and gizmos, and he puts that expertise to good use figuring out where the poisoned chocolate came from. He has motivation when he meets Epsi. Between the two of them, can they find out the truth before one faction among the Fae forces Guber to take the vacant throne -- and another faction kills him to make sure he doesn't take the throne?
Enjoy!!
hi Michelle, Congrats on the new releases. Are they going to be on kindle?
ReplyDeletejean
kystorywriter@gmail.com
It has been crazy quiet here today. I just love all of your Star Trek references in your answer. Ande the book sounds like a riot. I love how you have mashed and twisted to create your story. I was wondering is you ever sprinkle the Star Trek references into the series or if this series takes place on a different plane? I have to go add this to my oversized wish list!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway.
jepebATverizonDOTnet
Yes, all my Uncial Press books are avialable on Amazon Kindle. I don't know what the schedule is for release -- sometimes Amazon doesn't make things available immediately. But the stories will be there eventually.
ReplyDeleteAs for Star Trek ... well, the stories take place on planet Earth. I have some characters in my Divine's Emporium stories who have a Star Trek club. They also make reference to Marvel Comics as their source for figuring out their semi-superhero powers and the rules to live by. "With great power comes great responsibility." Y'know?
I would have to say that yes, my Fae stories take place on "our" Earth ... it's just in corners of our Earth that the rest of the mundane world hasn't discovered yet. Kind of like the situation with Warehouse 13, where all these weird, mystical artifacts are all over the place, and they have to be gathered up to keep stupid people from wreaking havoc without realizing what they're doing.
Does that answer the question? Or just make things worse? [G]
OMG, a Warehouse 13 reference! I am smiling all over myself. These are going to the top of my wish list! Thanks for the response!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the release! The chocolate looks yummy! I love how your book is about faeries, you cant go wrong there. Your book sounds wonderful, thank you for sharing. Whats your favorite part in this book? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteshadow_kohler@att.net
I work in Early Childhood & so a Fae daycare teacher sounds like something I either really need or really don't. I can't wait to read this & I was wondering what was your inspiration?
ReplyDeletemarypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Shadow asked what's my favorite part.
ReplyDeleteYeah, ask me the hardest question of all... There are so many parts.
I guess the ones that make me giggle, even after I've done about 10 revisions and gone through three rounds of edits with an editor who insists I change my word choice, or doesn't understand the image I'm trying to convey.
I like the moment that Lance sees his "challenge" inside the daycare -- infested with bugs, drawn by malfunctioning magic. He hears the "Jaws" theme and says, "We're gonna need a bigger boat."
Or where Megan and Alexi face down a bunch of Need-driven Fae women who are determined to win Alexi, and Megan gets one of them bound to the target for the knife-throwing trick -- and the knives become real and get pulled away from where she aimed them. And I'm not going to tell you more about that scene or ruin the story.
Or where Kevyn is invisible, trying to avoid groupies who think he's a "real" Star Trek actor -- and a swordfight breaks out in the hallway and he gets involved in breaking up the fight. He looks over, and realizes Sophie can see him.
Or when he lets Sophie get him drunk on diet cherry cola, so she can kidnap him out from under the nose of the hunters trying to drag him off to law school.
Or in the new story, where Guber has super-soakers loaded with "poisoned" chocolate syrup, (you'll have to read the story to find out what's wrong with this particular chocolate -- and everyone has a different reaction to it) and uses them to shoot the Fae who come after him, determined to wipe out the hereditary royal line -- and they follow their natural inclination to eat chocolate when it's in their mouths -- or faces.
As for my inspiration for the daycare story ... I honestly can't remember back that far. I mentioned earlier that I brainstormed it while I was at work, so it's very likely I threw out the notes at work and emailed the final resuls, the outline and an opening scene, to myself at the end of the day. Sorry, no way to track down the progression from "I gotta write a story involving malfunctioning magic" to the story about a Fae hitting puberty/Pon Farr, who meets an exterminator needing the kiss of a Faerie princess to break his curse -- and there are no princesses anymore.
I can't remember when I brought in the "ghostly roundup," the malevolent chauvinist ghosts who haunt Lance and make his life -- and the girl he wants to fall in love with -- miserable. But I think that was a piece of brilliance, if I do say so myself!
Well, it's going on 9pm here.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to call it a day.
I'll be contacting everybody who has posted a comment and their email, to get their postal info. And one of you will be chosen as the winner of the All's Fae T-shirt.
Thanks so much for coming to the Cyber Launch Party!
If anyone comes and posts more comments after I get off the Internet, you'll be included in the party favors, too -- so do feel free to ask more questions!
Thanks, everybody. I hope you've found something interesting here.
I love stories about the Fae. I would like to ask you how you gathered the courage to start putting the stories in your head to paper. I think about it sometimes but I am too afraid that what is in my head won't translate to paper.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Michelle, congratuations on your new release. I'm very impressed with your creativity and the number of stories you already have in print. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteJana (a fellow Uncials author)